THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Bill Baird

b. 1932

“Reach out to one another and care, and say, ‘How can I help you?’ Most of all, please vote. You can lose your whole dignity and freedom.  I’m telling you from a 92-year-old guy, we’re in big danger. Wake up, world. You’re not going to get a second chance.”

Lifelong reproductive rights activist. Established the nation’s first nonprofit birth control/abortion facility in Hempstead, NY, staffed by doctors providing free reproductive health care, 1964. The founder and director of the Pro-Choice League. Bill and his co-director of the Pro Choice League, Joni Scott, worked with Father Frank Pavone, co-founder and director of Priests for Life, to create a document calling for an end to anti-abortion hate speech and violence. In 2002, the agreement between pro-choice and anti-abortion sides was signed, and copies sent by Fr. Pavone to hundreds of dioceses and anti-abortion groups nationally.

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, July 2024

Photo. Two policemen look on as Baird holds up photo of his torched abortion clinic in Long Island in 1985 [Courtesy of Bettmann/Archive]